Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday June 23, 2005 @10:27AM
from the are-you-threatening-me? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements by default, a DoubleClick executive has warned. Bennie Smith, the online advertising network's privacy chief, said the popularity of tools like Adblock -- an extension to the Mozilla Firefox browser -- which makes blocking online ads simple was tied to 'a negative vibe against advertising in general'."

"He said if a similar tool could be produced for newspapers, it would not be accepted by consumers. 'You'd go to your local corner shop and buy the daily paper, and you'd have these large holes where the ads were. You'd somehow feel like your 25 cents had not gotten full value,' he said."

What if you went to a baseball game, and there were only open space -- holes, that is -- where the billboards usually were, and your beer cup had a hole where the "Budweiser" logo goes, and the peanuts were generic (with holes in them), and there were dogs with holes in their mouth and when they bark they shoot holes at you? I say, you'd somehow feel you didn't get a good value!

PODUNK, NH - John "The Weasel" Gibbons complained that active policing was putting a cramp on his style.

"Youz all needs burglars, see?" said Gibbons in an interview from his cell. "We're keeping the economy running, you shoulds be thanking us!"

Arguing that product theft spurred economic activity by forcing consumers to purchase more, Gibbons estimates that if burglary drops by a mere 15% nationally, the effects could be felt in the form of hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs as demand for replacement products wane.

"It's like this," he said as he preened his whiskers. "Them cops, they're always sniffing around where they ain't welcome, but instead of helping the economy by buying donuts like theys do in the movies, they're out busting honest, hard working economic invigorators like myself!"

His tail whipping back and forth in a frenzy, Gibbons then launched into a tirade against the specific officers that had arrested him earlier that afternoon for cutting a stereo out of a parked car.

Finally, he closed the interview with this prediction: "If yous all don't hold in the reins on Magruff over there, industries are gonna topple! Let me and my friends free, for the sake of our country!" He then scampered to his nest at the back of the cell.

""You'd go to your local corner shop and buy the daily paper, and you'd have these large holes where the ads were.
"You'd somehow feel like your 25 cents had not gotten full value," he said."
I would personally love to have newspapers with giant blank spaces in place of ads. If only I read newspapers in the first place, and didn't rely on Slashdot and Fark for my news.

Of all the advertising companies out there, there's no one more evil than DoubleClick. I mean, you really can't get more evil than DoubleClick. IF being annoying was an F1 race, DoubleClick would be Ferrari. Its ads are really annoying, with all the Flash crap, sounds, pop-ups, tracking cookies and shady Javascript code. How the hell does this guy expect people *not* to block DoubleClick?

Hint: Change your company's ways of advertising to something reasonable [google.com] and maybe people will stop binding your domains to 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file. If the way you make money is unethical (legal != ethical), don't be surprised when people boycott your company. This is like the Italian Mafia Godfather complaining that people protect their stores with alarms.

Doubleclick and other advertisers need to learn that "grabbing your attention" generally equates to "annoying as hell". People hate animated ads, flash ads, and their ilk. However, Google has done a very good job with its simple text-based ads, and I've supported those by clicking them. They're unobtrusive and more relevant to the topic I'm reading about (well, usually).

People don't block ads. People block annoyances. Witness the "click to play" Flash plugins as well.

He said if a similar tool could be produced for newspapers, it would not be accepted by consumers.

That might be true if ads in the newspaper and those online were even remotely similar. Funny, I don't remember an ad for a dating service in the newspaper covering up a story I wanted to read until I acknowledged it. Nor have I ever finished the paper, laid it down, and then found an ad laying in my lap underneath it!

If DoubleClick is to go out of buisness, it should exploit its remaining time by focusing on penis enlargment. I mean someone must be making money of on those ads, and I know double click can do a much better ad: No popup/under, just a big slowly growing penis eventually filling & obscuring the page and inspiring millions of men and women to buy their system.